An IoT may be defined as “a pervasive and ubiquitous network which enables monitoring and control of the physical environment by collecting, processing, and analyzing the data generated by sensors or smart objects.” Securing the Internet of Things: A Proposed Framework, Jazib Frahim, Carlos Pignataro, Jeff Apcar and Monique Morrow, Published by Cisco Security Research & Operations and available at: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/about/security-center/secure-iot-proposed-framework.html.
Examples of such sensors include refrigerators, lights, smartphones, smartwatches, computers, laptops, tablets, sinks, hot water heaters, coffee machines, ovens, vehicles, thermostats and any other suitable devices.
The diverse nature and large volume of data collected by numerous interconnected nodes on an IoT potentially enables unique functionality and operational opportunities.
Interconnected nodes may gather data. Computing systems may process the gathered data and derive new knowledge or insights from the gathered data. The new knowledge may be leveraged to provide feedback to the nodes or instructions to other nodes. Such feedback improves efficiency and intelligence of the nodes. Exemplary effects of improved efficiency and intelligence may be recognized by optimizing processes, improving understanding and targeting of customer needs, increasing automation and decreasing latency when providing products and/or services.
In an IoT, each of the connected nodes may not have uniform computing capabilities, known network positions, known communication protocols or sufficient resources to provide security services. Furthermore, IoT connected nodes may not be centrally controlled. Accordingly, it may be technically challenging to leverage IoT connected nodes for transmission of sensitive information or other applications that require a threshold level of security or performance. For example, sensitive information may include personally identifiable information or financial information that needs to be properly secured from third-parties. Furthermore, the unstructured nature of an IoT, poses a technical challenge to detecting a compromised IoT connected node.
To solve these technical challenges, it would be desireable to provide technical solutions that allow non-uniform and interconnected IoT nodes to function seamlessly and securely to thereby leverage the distributed efficiency and intelligence capabilities provided by an IoT to transmit sensitive information. Accordingly, it would be desireable to provide apparatus and methods for tracking and identifying secure IoT nodes and tracking and identifying IoT nodes that may compromise integrity of sensitive information transmitted via such a compromised node.